Temporary visas, meant to import talent, help ship jobs abroad

Toys R Us mangers replaced 67 employees in New Jersey with workers in India, after Indian workers were trained by the American workers who were eventually let go.

Toys R Us mangers replaced 67 employees in New Jersey with workers...

WAYNE, N.J. - When Congress designed temporary work visa programs, the idea was to bring in foreigners with specialized, hard-to-find skills who would help U.S. companies grow, creating jobs to expand the economy. Now, though, some companies are bringing in workers on those visas to help move jobs out of the country.

For four weeks this spring, a young woman from India on a temporary visa sat elbow to elbow with an American accountant in a snug cubicle at the headquarters of Toys R Us here.

The Indian woman, an employee of a giant outsourcing company in India hired by Toys R Us, studied and recorded the accountant's every keystroke, taking screen shots of her computer and detailed notes on how she issued payments for toys sold in the company's megastores.

"She just pulled up a chair in front of my computer," said the accountant, 49, who had worked for the company for than 15 years. "She shadowed me everywhere, even to the ladies' room."

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By late June, eight workers from the outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services, or TCS, had produced intricate manuals for the jobs of 67 people, mainly in accounting. They then returned to India to train TCS workers to take over and perform those jobs there. The Toys R Us employees in New Jersey, many of whom had been at the company more than a decade, were laid off.

Employers must sign pledge

A temporary visa program known as H-1B allows U.S. employers to hire foreign professionals with college degrees and "highly specialized knowledge," mainly in science and technology, to meet their needs for particular skills. Employers, according to the federal guidelines, must sign a declaration that the foreign workers "will not adversely affect the working conditions" of Americans or lower their wages.

In recent years, however, global outsourcing and consulting firms have obtained thousands of temporary visas to bring in foreign workers who have taken over jobs that had been held by American workers. The Labor Department has opened an investigation of possible visa violations by contractors at the Walt Disney Co. and at Southern California Edison, where immigrants replaced Americans in jobs they were doing in this country. Four former workers at Disney have filed discrimination complaints against the company. The companies say they have complied with all applicable laws.

But the Toys R Us layoffs - and others underway now at the New York Life Insurance Co. and other businesses - go further. They are examples of how global outsourcing companies are using temporary visas to bring in foreign workers who do not appear to have exceptional skills - according to interviews with a dozen current or former employees of Toys R Us and New York Life - to help ship out jobs, mainly to India.

These former employees described their experience training foreigners to do their work so it could be moved to India. They would speak only on the condition that their names not be published, saying they feared losing severance payments or hurting their chances of finding new jobs.

In most cases where jobs have been moved overseas, the positions have been in technology, with employers arguing there are shortages of Americans with the most advanced skills. But in recent years, many jobs that American workers lost have been in accounting and back-office administration - although there is no shortage of Americans qualified do that kind of work.

The core purpose of the temporary work visas is to help U.S. companies compete in the global economy. "If employers are able to hire the key people, they can keep jobs in the U.S. and create new jobs here," said Lynn Shotwell, executive director of the Council for Global Immigration, which lobbies Congress for more visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

Outsourcing firms, and the companies hiring them, say they are careful not to violate any laws. But some experts argue the intent of the visas is being thwarted.

"At the very least, those are violations of the spirit of the law," said Christine Brigagliano, a lawyer in San Francisco with extensive experience advising American companies on obtaining visas. "Those contractors are signing on the bottom line, saying we will not undercut the wages and working conditions of Americans. But, in fact, they are."

Significant cost savings

The companies see it differently.

Kathleen Waugh, a spokeswoman for Toys R Us, said the staff reduction there was part of "designing a streamlined, more efficient global organization to make it fit for growth." She said the contractors were required to comply with "any and all immigration laws." The outsourcing, she noted, "resulted in significant cost savings."

William Werfelman, a vice president and spokesman at New York Life, said the outsourcing was part of a transformation of its technology systems that would soon result in more jobs in the United States. "Our decisions are centered on keeping the company competitive, keeping it in the United States, keeping it growing," he said.

Temporary H-1B visas are limited to 85,000 each year. In the last five years, federal records show, most of the companies that received the largest share of H-1B visas have been global outsourcing firms, including TCS; Infosys, another large Indian company; Cognizant, which is based in the United States; and Accenture, a consulting operation incorporated in Ireland.

Those companies also use another temporary visa, the L-1B, which has no annual cap and allows businesses to internally transfer their employees who have "advanced knowledge" from branches in other countries to offices in the United States. A spokesman for TCS, Benjamin Trounson, said it maintained "rigorous internal controls to ensure we are fully compliant with all regulatory requirements."

he layoffs at New York Life were set in motion in 2014 when the company announced a $1 billion plan for an ambitious upgrade of its financial and data technology systems.

Since New York Life is not a technology company, said Werfelman, the spokesman, it turned to contractors for the upgrade. The company plans to cut about 300 jobs, including up to one-fifth of its 1,400 technology workers, as well as some financial accountants. With 9,000 staff employees and 12,000 agents nationwide, New York Life is the largest mutual life insurer in the United States.

"We know there will be pain along the way," Werfelman said. But he said that with new innovative technology, the company could rapidly expand despite the job cuts. He said it planned to hire 1,000 employees and 3,500 agents this year alone.